A young man.Was unlucky not to get at least 1 win against Eubank.
1 Like
I re-watched the latter stages of Ray Closeâs second fight against Chris Eubank when I heard he had died last night. By God it was some atmosphere in the Kingâs Hall that night. An amazing showcase for the classic âHere We Goâ Irish sporting chant. That was Eubankâs last fight on ITV. In this part of the world we had Mark Robson on UTV commentating live though this is nowhere to be found on the YouTubes. Ray Close was indeed a very unlucky boxer who went toe to toe with Eubank twice and was the equal of him.
He was a tough fucker⌠Steve Collins only got his fight against Chris Eubank when the 3rd fight between Ray Close and Eubank was cancelled late in the day.
Close then called out Collins after his win against Eubanks but Collins knew not to go thereâŚ
1 Like
Jeffrey Archer
Reunited with Monica Coughlan.
Edit: Coghlan
Ah, he was a character in fairness. Kane and Abel was a good book.
2 Likes
Jeffrey doesnât seem to have been a paedo which is high praise indeed for a dead Tory.
1 Like
He must be the one of the very few Jeffreys who moved in right wing political circles not to be one.
1 Like
An absolute cunt of a man let it be said.
4 Likes
8 Likes
The five people who bought a ticket at least can feel the same as those who bought Nirvana tickets in 94
1 Like
Adam and Steve.
I strongly recommend Stranger Than Fiction, Michael Crickâs magisterial 1995 biography of Archer. The front cover blurbs alone are magnificent.
âBrilliantâ â Sunday Times
âI hate this bookâ â Jeffrey Archer
5 Likes
Enjoyed First Among Equals. Granada also did a great 10 part tv adaption of it.
1 Like
Im not sure about that.
In Dublin we had the UTV commentary a la when BBC Norn Iron would break off from Grandstand to bring us studio coverage from BELFAST of Ireland v Scotland in the Five Nations in DUBLIN. Robson was 100% the commentator alongside, I think, Dave Boy McAuley. Robson was full certain Close had it and was effusive in his support of Close in the way he was in later years when David Humphreys would slot a last minute drop goal to give Ulster a famous Friday night Heino victory over Stade Francais on a December night at Ravenhill.
1 Like
I was watching the same feed but i thought Reg was doing the commentary
Reg Gutteridge didnât even do the main ITV feed it was Jim âThe Countâ Rosenthal on duty that night.
1 Like
A neck like a jockeyâs bollocks.
Jeffrey Archer, best-selling writer and Tory MP with an incomparably colourful personal life
His life story was a tale of ambition, power, money and sexual intrigue, with more unexpected twists and turns than one of his novels
Gift this article free
Add us as preferred source
Archer in 2022: no other figure in modern public life provided so much entertainment Credit: Andrew Crowley
Published 06 October 2026 12:07am BST
Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, who has died aged 86, was one of the most extraordinary and colourful figures ever to strut across the political stage; no other character in modern public life provided so much entertainment or fuelled so many headlines.
Archerâs life story was a tale of ambition, power, money and sexual intrigue, overflowing with unexpected twists and turns, a tale infinitely more fantastic and implausible even than the plots of his best-selling novels.
The bare bones of his career are easily described â self-made millionaire from a lower-middle-class background hauls himself out of adversity by enterprise and effort, becomes one of the worldâs best-selling authors, friend and confidant to the great and powerful, but is repeatedly brought down by serious flaws in his own character, culminating in imprisonment for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
Advertisement
There was never any doubt that Archer had great abilities and did a tremendous amount of good. Bumptious, irrepressible and utterly insensitive, the âextrovertâs extrovertâ, as Margaret Thatcher called him, raised millions of pounds for charity, became the champion fundraiser and darling of Conservative constituency associations and proved a loyal and generous friend to many.
Archer with Margaret Thatcher at the 1986 Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth Credit: PA
Celebrities and sports stars mingled with politicians at the Krug and shepherdâs pie parties he gave at his penthouse apartment overlooking the Thames. Even Princess Diana apparently found him indispensable. On the day she was divorced, she asked him to stay with her.
As a novelist, although the critics sneered at his clunky prose and cardboard characterisations, the sales statistics spoke for themselves. His 1979 novel Kane and Abel sold more than a million copies within a week of publication, and he continued to rattle off bestsellers until the end of his life, with total sales of more than 320 million books.
The fatal flaw that undermined Archerâs achievements, as his wife, Dame Mary Archer, once explained, was his âgift for inaccurate precisâ. The less charitable might have called it his propensity to tell whopping lies to dig his way out of trouble. He was, as Willie Whitelaw remarked, âan accident waiting to happenâ.
Archerâs first brush with disaster came in 1974 when, as Conservative MP for Louth, he resigned his seat after losing most of his money gambling on an inside tip on the stockmarket that later proved to be fraudulent.
Advertisement
Created deputy chairman of the Conservative Party by Thatcher in 1985, he resigned the post the following year after allegations of a relationship with a prostitute. Following the libel trial that followed, Archer won a total of ÂŁ500,000 in damages from the Daily Star.
In 1994 the DTI launched an enquiry after Archer, by then a Conservative peer, bought a large number of shares in a company on which his wife served as a director two days before a merger boosted the share price.
In October 1999, he won the Conservative nomination to stand for election as Mayor of London. The following month he resigned following allegations that he had asked a friend to lie for him during the Daily Star libel trial 12 years previously.
The saga of the libel trial began in October 1986 when an article appeared in the News of the World alleging that Archer had paid ÂŁ2,000 to a prostitute called Monica Coghlan to enable her to go abroad. Archer denied that he had ever met Monica Coghlan.
A few days later the Daily Star followed up the story with an article alleging that Archer had lied. He had had sex with Monica Coghlan in a hotel in Pimlico, the paper alleged. Moreover, after she had telephoned him, Archer had (through an intermediary) given her an envelope stuffed with a wad of ÂŁ2,000 in ÂŁ50 notes.
Archer decided to take the Star to court first. During the trial in 1987, alibi evidence played an important part. To begin with, the Star had been uncertain about the precise date on which Archer was supposed to have visited Monica Coghlan, but Archer had two different witnesses prepared to vouch for him on both nights.
His wife, Mary, also played an important part in the trial. She and her husband, she said, had a happy marriage and lived a âfullâ life. âThe thought of my husband consorting with a prostituteâ, she said, â is preposterousâ.
Archer kissing his wife goodbye as she leaves court, 2001 Credit: PNS/Photo News Service/Avalon
For the judge in the trial, Sir Bernard Caulfield, Mary Archerâs testimony was decisive: âRemember Mrs Archer in the witness box,â he exhorted the jury. âYour vision of her will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance?â. The judge had no doubts. Living with such a paragon, how could Archer âpossibly be in need of cold, unloving rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel?â
Twelve years later, Jeffrey Archerâs carefully constructed defence began to unravel. In November 1999, the News of the World revealed that Archer had persuaded a friend, the television executive Ted Francis, to provide him with a false alibi for the evening of September 9, one of the two nights in question.
Archer claimed (truthfully) that the lie had been concocted not to protect him from Monica Coghlan but to protect his real dinner date from publicity. She was Andrina Colquhoun, a 46-year-old blonde. In fact Francisâs affidavit was never read out in court as by that time the Star had decided to plump for September 8 as the night in question.
A few days later, Michael Stacpole, a former confidant of Archerâs and the man who had handed Monica Coghlan ÂŁ2,000, accused Archer of misleading the High Court about the state of his marriage. Archer, Stacpole said, had had several affairs with other women, including Andrina Colquhoun and prostitutes. Stacpole had allegedly been paid ÂŁ40,000 by Archer to go abroad to avoid giving evidence.
Then in December, Nick Elliott, a television executive, revealed that the theatrical agent Terence Baker, a key witness in the trial, had told him before he died in 1991 that he too had been persuaded to lie in the witness box. Baker had given evidence that on September 8 he had met Archer in Le Caprice restaurant, had had a drink with him, then had driven with Archer back to his home in Camberwell. This meant that he had been with Archer at 1am, the time when he was accused of being with Monica Coghlan.
As Scotland Yard announced they had begun an investigation into allegations that Archer had attempted to pervert the course of justice, the Conservative Party was finally galvanised into action and he was stripped of the Conservative whip in the House of Lords. In July 2001, Archer was found guilty and sentenced to four yearsâ imprisonment. As there was no means of stripping a convicted felon of a peerage, and he refused to do the decent thing and resign it, he remained a member of the House of Lords until he chose to retire 23 years later.
Jeffrey and Mary Archer together at their home in Cambridgeshire in 2016: the couple celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary earlier this year Credit: Andrew Crowley
Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in London on April 15 1940. His father, William, was a small-time confidence trickster who had been charged with fraud in Britain, America and Canada. By the time he married Archerâs mother in 1939, he was over 60 and had been married twice before, bigamously, to an Englishwoman and an American. He had three daughters.
In her divorce petition, his American wife accused William Archer of being ânot only an adventurer but a fraud of the worst typeâ. He owned âabsolutely nothing but lives on such money as he can dishonestly obtain from other peopleâ. William Archer would die in 1956, when Jeffrey was 15.
Jeffrey Archer would claim that his father had been in the Suffolk Light Infantry and had been awarded a DCM. Neither claim was true but he was invited to join the DCM League, whose membership is confined to medal winners and their offspring. When the truth was revealed in 1992, Archer was politely asked to resign.
Archerâs mother, Lola, was barely 20 when she married William Archer. She too had had children, a girl and a boy (the latter by William Archer), but both children had been put up for adoption.
In 1942 the Archers moved to the village of Mark in Somerset and two years later to Weston-Super-Mare. Times were hard and although they were not completely destitute, most of their income appears to have come from Lola, who had begun to try her hand at journalism, becoming the first woman journalist on the Weston Mercury.
In her column entitled Over the Teacups, Lola Archer would dispense advice on domestic management to Weston women and keep them abreast of the latest escapades of her beloved but scampish only son, âTuppenceâ.
Archer with his mother, Lola, in 2001 Credit: PA
On one occasion, she recorded, Tuppence arrived on the doorstep asking for a shilling so that he could go to the barber: âTaking of his cap to see if it were such an urgent matter, I realised there wasnât much left for the barber to do. Tuppence looked like a trappist monk on one side and a shaggy dog on the other. He and his pals had spent an exhilarating playtime cutting each otherâs hair. Seeing I was taking the whole thing very calmly, Tuppence smiled broadly and said virtuously âIf Iâve saved you a shilling, can I have sixpence of it to spend?ââ It was the first of many such youthful money-making wheezes.
In 1951 Archer won a county scholarship to Wellington, a direct grant boarding school in Somerset. He was a loner, was bullied and had few friends. Around 1955 he suddenly set himself on becoming the best gymnast in the school. He spent long hours frantically exercising and building up his body, and went on not only to win Wellingtonâs individual gymnastics competition (twice) but also county championships in the 100 yards sprint and the 120 yards hurdles.
Although Archer remained at Wellington until he was well over 18, he only achieved three O-levels and was never made a prefect.
For many years the story circulated that after leaving school, Archer spent time in North America and took a two-year course in anatomy at the University of California.
In fact the university had no record of the fact and, besides, it would have been physically impossible for Archer to have completed a serious university degree in America since he was otherwise occupied in England. After leaving school, he went on to the schoolâs Combined Cadet Force camp at Catterick and in 1958 began basic military training with the Duke of Wellingtonâs Regiment.
In 1959 he went on to Sandhurst, but only lasted a few months. In May 1960 he joined the Metropolitan Police, but after a few months abandoned that too.
Archer next became a PE instructor, first at Vicarâs Hill School, Hampshire, then at Dover College, a minor public school. He was by all accounts a brilliant coach. âBoys died for Archerâ, said one former pupil. âHe had that kind of charisma.â
In 1961 the school magazine congratulated him on âqualifying to become a Fellow of the International Federation of Physical Cultureâ. The IFPC, it later transpired, was a body-building club which helped members develop their muscles by home exercises.
Archer began moonlighting from Dover College and set up his first business from his digs in Dover offering advice to men on how to improve their bodies: âDirect from Americaâ ran the advertisement in Reveille, âthe Pal Malviro Bodybuilding Course.â Archerâs landlady was not best pleased when punters arrived on her doorstep wanting to know why they had not had a reply to their applications.
In 1963 Archer arrived in Oxford. His later claim to have been âatâ Oxford was technically true, though his claim (in Whoâs Who) to have been at Brasenose College was not. He was accepted for a one-year course at a teacher-training college loosely affiliated to the university, but on the basis of a recommendation from Dover College which claimed he had three A-levels and had completed a two-year course in anatomy at an American university.
Archer in 1966, with a photograph of John F Kennedy on his mantelpiece Credit: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive
Archer somehow managed to stay in Oxford for three years despite no longer being a student and succeeded in getting himself elected to the Union committee, winning two blues, in athletics and gymnastics, becoming chairman of the University Athletics Club and running for Great Britain in Stockholm in 1966.
He also met an attractive young chemistry student, Mary Weeden, pursued her relentlessly and in 1966 married her. On their marriage certificate, Mary described herself as a research graduate, which she was. So did Jeffrey, but he wasnât.
By the time he âcame downâ from Oxford, Archer had already made a name for himself as a charity fundraiser. In 1966 he talked his way backstage at a Beatles concert and persuaded the group to back a fund raising campaign for Oxfam. He raised ÂŁ400,000.
After a year working for a charity called the National Birthday Trust (from which he was sacked, having made a loss of ÂŁ6,000), Archer was elected to the Greater London Council in the Tory landslide of 1967. He claimed to be the youngest ever GLC councillor, which was untrue.
At once he approached his colleagues on the GLC offering to fill out their expense claim forms in return for 10 per cent of the âtakeâ. Many agreed.
While on the GLC, Archer got taken on as a fund-raiser by Humphrey Berkeley, chairman of the UN association, who took him on as flag day organiser then promoted him director of special projects. In 1969 Archer set up his own fund-raising company, Arrow enterprises.
At the UN association, though, Archer systematically fiddled his expenses. His speciality was to claim for meals taken by others and for journeys in other peopleâs cars. Humphrey Berkeley detected Archerâs fraud when he discovered claims for lunches for which he himself had paid. When the claims were challenged, Archer had to repay about ÂŁ150.
When, in 1969, Archer was selected as Tory candidate at a by-election for the safe Tory seat of Louth, Lincolnshire, Berkeley was outraged and circulated the facts about Archerâs fiddles to the press. When the story appeared in print, Archer was instructed by the Tory party hierarchy to sue or stand down. He sued. Years later, in an out-of-court settlement, Archer agreed to pay all the costs and Berkeley did not have to retract a word. Nevertheless the writ saw him safely elected MP for Louth in 1969.
At the 1997 Conservative Party Conference Credit: Avalon
As an MP Archer made 12 speeches in all, and in all but two criticised Conservative Government policy. He voted against admission charges for museums and abolition of free school milk, lobbied for the withdrawal of VAT on theatre tickets and condemned French nuclear tests in the Pacific. He was delighted when at one time his voting record was almost as bad as that of Enoch Powellâs, though in Archerâs case he was generally veering to the Left of his party. The Daily Telegraph at one point was so upset by an Archer speech, it suggested he should âbe prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act for calling himself a Conservativeâ.
In April 1972, Archer met Michael Altmann, an executive at the First National Bank of Boston, who told him about a likely new share on the Toronto stock market. The enterprise was called Aquablast. Archer immediately bought 55,000 shares then borrowed ÂŁ170,000 to buy a further 50,000. The business turned out to be a fraud, and in November 1975 most of the Aquablast directors ended up in a Toronto courtroom with Archer as the main prosecution witness.
But in the middle of the court case, Archer was arrested in a Toronto store on suspicion of shoplifting. Nothing could have been more damaging for the prosecution, and the charges were quickly withdrawn at the request of the police.
Archer nearly went bankrupt and in 1974 resigned as MP for Louth. For the time being Mary became the breadwinner.
But within a few years he had reinvented himself as a millionaire novelist with an huge art collection, a penthouse in London overlooking the Houses of Parliament and a country house, the Old Vicarage in Granchester, near Cambridge, where Rupert Brooke had been brought up.
Archer in his penthouse suite on the Albert Embankment, London, in 2010 Credit: Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph
Archerâs first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was clearly written with Hollywood in mind. The tale involved four men who between them are swindled out of $1m when they each invest in an oil company on the basis of what they think is hot inside information.
âThe writing, especially the dialogue is bad beyond belief,â said the Daily Telegraph critic, who castigated its trashy, plodding style and shallow characterisation. But it hardly mattered what the critics said; the important verdict was in the shops, where it sold 20,000 copies in a month. Warner Brothers bought the film rights for ÂŁ125,000. Archer especially relished the hard sell that others found distasteful. Many more such novels followed.
Meanwhile, Archer started to rebuild his political career, addressing Conservative Associations and encouraging them to write to the party leader, Thatcher, saying what a marvellous time they had had. In the early 1980s, the Archers became occasional guests at Chequers and rumours circulated that he might be given a peerage. Instead, in 1985, he was made Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.
The misgivings of some members of the party were borne out almost at once with a series of embarrassing gaffes. Among other things, Archer asserted that the Tories could not go into the next election with the same unemployment figures and expect to win, and described the governmentâs handling of its own PR as âpatheticâ, adding âyou wouldnât buy a used car from this government would you?â
Archer at the unveiling of his latest book in India, 2010 Credit: Prodip Guha
Archerâs media appearances were rapidly curtailed and he concentrated instead on constituency tours, always giving the same speech â about how he rose from rags to riches.
Weeks before the Tory Party Conference of 1987, Archer had two telephone calls from a woman calling herself Debbie and rumours started to circulate in Fleet Street that he had had an assignment with a prostitute.
Following his successful libel action, Archer resumed his constituency tours, supported John Major for the Party leadership and in 1992 was rewarded by Major with a life peerage.
Archerâs experience with Aquablast did not deter him from dealing on the stock exchange. In 1994 Anglia Television (on whose board Mary Archer was a non-executive director) negotiated a secret merger deal with Clive Hollick of MAI. The next day, Archer bought 25,000 Anglia shares for a âKurdish friendâ. When news of the merger broke a few days later, Anglia shares soared and Archer sold the 25,000 shares for a profit of ÂŁ80,000.
Archer subsequently claimed that the take-over tip had been given to him at a dinner party by Sir Nicholas Lloyd. In fact the dinner party had taken place days after the merger had been announced. A subsequent DTI enquiry decided that there was no action to be taken, though in November 1999 the DTI reopened their inquiry.
After the Labour landslide of 1997, the following year Archer announced his intention to seek adoption as the Partyâs candidate to fight the inaugural election for Mayor of London, to be held in 2000. William Hagueâs obvious reluctance to endorse him and demands by Sir Timothy Kitson, the Conservative MP, that the Partyâs new ethics and integrity committee investigate Archer made no difference to the party faithful and in October 1999, he was formally adopted.
In the few weeks before his downfall, Archer poured all his energies into the campaign, touring the world and being photographed with mayors from New York to St Petersburg and getting out and pressing the flesh in the streets of London. âThereâs an immediate rapport between me and real people,â he said, âthey put their arms around me in the street and say âAw Gawd, Jeff, I lorst everything but no need to tell yew cos yew know only too well.ââ
With Joan Collins at a book launch in 2023: Archer was a friend and confidant to a galaxy of the powerful and famous Credit: Eamonn M. McCormack
In September 2000, on the very day that police announced he was being charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, Archer made his professional acting debut as a doctor accused of murdering his wife in his own new play The Accused. The playâs audience, he had decided, would be the jury for the courtroom drama: âI want the audience to be in a right bloody quandary, arguing with each other: well did he do it?⌠I want a different decision every night.â
After his conviction Archer served time in a number of prisons, including HMP Belmarsh, before being released halfway through his four-year sentence. He displayed little sense of repentance in his three bestselling volumes of Prison Diaries (2002-04).
His popularity as a novelist seemed hardly dented, and the books continued to flow: in his 80th year he utilised his passion for collecting art when he embarked on an eight-book series about William Warwick, a police detective specialising in art theft.
Having brought that project to a successful conclusion, he announced that his final novel would be an ambitious wartime saga called Adam and Eve, which is published this week.
âI always say to people if you fall on your backside, get up and try again,â Archer said. âYouâll fall on it again but youâll get up again. Get on with it.â
Jeffrey Archer is survived by his wife Mary and their two sons.
Jeffrey Archer, born April 15 1940, died October 5 2026
1 Like